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John Gillan of JG Broadcast has just filmed Time Team special, The Secrets of Westminster Abbey for Channel 4.

The director needed some jib shots in some very confined and difficult to get to areas of the Abbey, areas not normally accessible to the public. The production had used a Jimmy jib but faced a few access problems with certain areas of the abbey because of its size and weight, so a polecam was required to get better access to those areas.

Some of the shrines had only a small gap above them and it was only possible to get a top shot using the Polecam's small head to fit in-between.

Another location required us to carry the Polecam rig up a spiral staircase of 100 or so stairs into the balconies above the abbey to get some some really high vertical rotating shots of the abbey floor below. Whilst up there we re-located a few times which required a de-rig but only took a few minutes to do that with the Polecam.

Back on the ground, the mosaic floor was being restored and a few sweeping shots over the heads of the restorers down to a close up of the tiles just a few inches away was all kept nice and sharp thanks to the large depth of field offered by the prime lenses I use on the Toshiba HD1 camera I have, shooting 1080i and recording onto my Flash XDR recorder.

Although John has a Jimmy Jib as well, this was one of those jobs where ONLY a Polecam would do!